


wrong reasons

by venndaai



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: F/F, Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata - Freeform, Post-Season/Series 03, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 02:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15209231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: It hadn't really been a choice.(Short introspective fic for Drummer post 3x13.)





	wrong reasons

When she was in the elevator shaft, Drummer was careful to only think about each task in front of her: to focus on the process of arming each grenade, her entire universe narrowing down to encompass only those two small spheres. It wasn’t until forty minutes later, when she was reasonably certain she was going to survive (at least until the next big fuck up), that she allowed herself to think about what she had been willing to sacrifice. She stood once more at the spot which was the metaphorical helm of the Behemoth, and she leaned heavily on the railing, feeling the muscles of her stomach groan, feeling nothing at all below the waist, and she watched Naomi, who had taken over the comms with her usual unrelenting efficiency, and she watched Naomi frown at some idiot on the other end of the line, and she noticed a single strand of hair had drifted lose from Naomi’s mohawk and hung suspended in the microgravity of the command center, and Drummer thought about how she’d nearly given up any chance to see any of that.

It hadn’t really been a choice. It had been what had to happen, at least until Naomi had pulled off another miracle. Sabaka, but Drummer felt herself shiver just remembering that moment, the fear in Naomi’s voice, the way Drummer had stared stupidly down the shaft for what felt like an eternity before she’d managed to get it together and disarm the grenades. 

It hadn’t been a choice, but when her doctor finally forced her back to medical- when her doctor gave her the bad news- Drummer thought of Naomi’s hair curling loose. She thought of that moment in the elevator shaft. She was polite to the doctor.

Naomi came to visit her, before she left again. Drummer hoped that she would, but wasn’t completely certain. This time Naomi’s face was carefully blank, no raw pain at the sight of Drummer’s situation. She’d always been a fast learner. Drummer smiled at her. The smile would have hurt less if it had been fake. 

“How are you?” Naomi asked. She sat very carefully on the edge of Drummer’s stretcher. 

Drummer thought of lying. “Like shit,” she said, quickly and carelessly, and followed up with an offensive: “How are your inners? I hear you got three more of them now.”

Naomi smiled, sweet and dreamy, and Drummer felt herself responding to that smile until Naomi said, “Holden just can’t stop picking up strays.” 

Of course that look on her face was always for fucking Holden. Drummer wanted to kiss it off of her. 

She reminded herself, yet again, that everyone made choices. All you could do was stick to yours.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Drummer said. She wished she could express that feeling she’d had, holding those live grenades and knowing that she was alive because Naomi was the best engineer in the system- or out of it. And because Naomi wouldn’t let her, Drummer, die.

But she’d never been eloquent. 

Naomi gave her a Belter shrug, a long movement of the arms. _Im ta nating._ “You buy me a drink sometime,” she said, and Drummer almost, almost could be angry at her then. She wanted to open her mouth and say, yes, I’ll buy you a drink back at the Blue Bar on Level One, back on Tycho, after Fred debriefs us we can head there and drink all our worries away, except I won’t drink too much because you’ll be there to tell me when I’ve had enough. 

Naomi, she thought randomly, looked different under heavy gravity. Under the one-third G of the spinning drum her hair didn’t float the same and her arms when she reached for Drummer’s hand moved more slowly. 

“You weren’t the wrong reason,” Naomi said. “I can’t fight for a cause any more. The OPA was the wrong reason. I’ll always be Belter, but I’ll never really be OPA. Just the way things are.”

She didn’t say, and _you’ll always be OPA._ Kind of her. Drummer still heard it, still wondered if she was right. 

  
  
  


It was several hours later that she got her first message from Fred since they’d gone through the Ring. He told her she’d saved humanity. It was at least half propaganda, meant more for everyone else on the Behemoth’s command deck than for her, but she nodded at the video and tried to dislodge the strange ache in her chest at the sight of Fred’s face. She’d left Tycho angry and miserable, but right now all she wanted was to be back there. Back home. 

“Maybe you did save us all,” Ashford said, when she visited him in his confinement, clanking into his room with her mechanically assisted legs. “At least for now. I still think that station’s not to be trusted, but at least our species don’t die today.” 

The species. It was too big to think about. Drummer wasn’t Fred, she wasn’t even James Holden. She was a more limited kind of person, and that wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault that when she tried to think about humanity, she thought about Naomi Nagata, naked and laughing in Drummer’s bunk on Tycho, skin sheened with sweat from the dancing and from sex. 

The doctor had been brutally honest with Drummer. That kind of night wasn’t happening again. Anyway Naomi was on her way to a whole new solar system, with Jim Fucking Holden. Drummer wanted to hate Ashford for all of it, but there was nothing in his face but tired sympathy. She poured them both another glass.

It wasn’t until the day after that that she got the orders from Fred. The Behemoth wasn’t going home, not when there were new horizons just waiting to be plundered by the Inners if Beltalowda let them. Fred told Drummer not to let them.

Drummer let herself think longingly of her bunk on Tycho, of the Blue Bar, of her favorite observation deck and the noise of the crowds on the docking ring. She indulged in these thoughts for a while. Then she packed it all up and put it away, wishing she could do the same with the thoughts that kept going to the Rocinante. None of it really mattered. She was alive by the grace of Naomi Nagata, and there was a whole new world out there, and savior of humanity or no, in love or not, Drummer had work to do.


End file.
